Saudi Biobank

The National Biobank Facility at King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC) is a state of the art facility. It is the first functional Biobank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council Region. The aim of the National Biobank Facility is to collect, store and process samples for various research projects within KAIMRC and the Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs (MNG-HA). The flagship project is the Saudi Biobank aiming to enroll 200,000 participants from both healthy and disease specific populations. The National Biobank Facility collaborates with national and international institutes. Saudi National Biobank will serve as the base and supplier of health research by recruiting large number of volunteers from Saudi National Guard community who will donate their health information and biological samples for research purposes.

The main objectives of the department are:

To encourage the donation of specimens

To educate the public about the benefits of studying biological materials

To collaborate with the community to implement best practices and promising approaches

To quantify the incidence of various diseases in the population and subpopulations

To understand the natural history and risk factors for diseases including the genome-environment interaction

To accelerate the discovery and development of new diagnostics and therapeutics